Is Change On the Horizon?

"My experience and observations confirm that politics as the practice of morality is possible."

- Former President of Czechoslavakia Vaclav Havel, 1992

Is politics as the practice of morality possible in this country? Recent public opinion surveys suggest that most Americans think not, at least not now.

Most of us have come to see politics as the cynical, if not sinister, art of manipulation and deception, of exclusion and inequality, of public impoverishment and private gain. As for democracy, it's great stuff for high school civics textbooks and Fourth of July oratory, but most of us don't think it has much to do with "politics" as we know it.

A moral politics--a politics rooted in truthfulness and compassion, in human dignity and equality--is what democracy should be all about. As a people who profess that democracy is what we stand for, this is the kind of politics we should aspire to.

To be sure, as Havel reminds us, "As long as people are people, democracy, in the full sense of the word, will always be no more than an ideal...[to be approached] as one would the horizon." Yet without ideals to aim for, horizons to move toward, we are left with little inspiration or direction for making things better.

Issues of democracy are not simply political issues; they are moral issues as well. Truth-telling as the bedrock of our political discourse is a moral issue. Public accountability on the part of our elected representatives is a moral issue. Equal opportunity to run for public office and to be heard by those in office is a moral issue.

Besides being moral issues in their own right, they are critical to addressing a host of social, economic, and environmental issues whose moral context, for many of us, is even clearer--racism and poverty, militarism and pollution, for example. If we hope to ever make real headway toward solving problems in these areas instead of watching each one steadily grow worse, we have no choice but to reform the political process through which all the solutions to them must eventually pass.

The fact is that big-money interests have a stranglehold on that process. It is a process in which well-heeled economic concerns exercise inordinate and anti-democratic influence over who can successfully compete for major public office, what issues are raised and not raised in election campaigns, who our elected representatives are primarily accountable to, and who benefits from the laws, regulations, and appointments they make.

It's not surprising that most Americans don't even bother to vote anymore. As longtime black civil rights activist Gwen Patton says, "Our people fought and died for the right to vote, but what's the use of voting if there's no one to vote for? Money has discounted our vote and corrupted public service. It's made a mockery of the 1965 Voting Rights Act."

THOSE OF US WHO DO vote usually do so halfheartedly--some out of a vague sense of civic duty and others of us, including myself, in order to avoid the greater of two evils. For example, a Bill Clinton presidency may provide a new national atmosphere in which decency and fairness are more possible, and in which those of us working for positive social change have a little more room to move. But we should have no illusions about a Clinton administration initiating or supporting any fundamental changes in the status quo.

The problem is well illustrated by the list of Clinton's top advisers. One of them is a former lobbyist (against unions) for the National Association of Manufacturers. A key Clinton foreign policy adviser is a lobbyist for Toyota. His adviser on U.S.-Israeli relations is general counsel to the largest pro-Israel lobby. And a man listed as Clinton's "general adviser" is a vice-chair of a Washington lobbying firm that has made a practice of representing ruthless dictators.0

An even better indication of what we can expect (or not expect) from a Clinton administration comes from examining the sources of Clinton's campaign contributions. As of the end of May, his campaign had received $14 million, with the overwhelming majority of it ($11.8 million) in the form of contributions greater than $200 from wealthy individuals.

Most of these individuals, of course, are closely associated with one or more private industries that are directly affected by federal laws and regulations. These industries include, most prominently, finance and securities, real estate, health care and pharmaceuticals, communications and electronics, construction, agribusiness, energy and natural resources, and transportation.

Bill Clinton (and, needless to say, George Bush even more so) has been dependent on these giant corporate interests for the financial wherewithal that's brought him this far, and if he gets into the White House he'll be dependent on them for his re-election in 1996. This being the case (and also the case for most members of Congress), is there any realistic chance of our seeing major banking or tax reform during a Clinton presidency? A serious commitment to low-income housing and urban revitalization? The enactment of a universal health care system? Initiatives to protect and encourage family farming and to discourage agrichemical poisoning? A major research investment in energy conservation and recycling? Or a non-interventionist foreign policy? Absent a major social upheaval in the meantime, we would do well not to hold our breath.

A major social upheaval? Yes, that's exactly what's needed. And we're due for one. An upheaval on the order of the great social movements that have led to profound changes in our society's attitudes and institutions in the past--those paradigm-shifting movements for the abolition of slavery, for women's suffrage, for the rights of working people and labor unions, for civil rights and women's equality. In one sense, all of these movements can be seen as "pro-democracy" movements that succeeded in expanding not just the voting franchise, but, even more important, expanding our notions of human dignity and equality, upon which any system of genuine political democracy must be founded.

What we need now is a new social movement, building on those that have come before, but one that is explicitly a pro-democracy movement. A movement that echoes the thundering cries for democracy we are hearing from South Africa and Chile, Thailand and China, Eastern Europe and the former Soviet republics. Yet a movement that is uniquely our own, one which recognizes that the principles of democracy, if not their fulfillment, took root here 200 years ago, and that our task is to revitalize those principles and bring them closer to reality.

A U.S. pro-democracy movement must address itself not only to the systemic problem of conflict of interest, but to its corollary: political disenfranchisement. "People are not apathetic," reports a recent survey of non-voters by the Kettering Foundation, "they feel shut out"--shut out by a political system that is predicated on the assumption that you have to "pay to play."

Ours is a system in which the only people who can successfully compete for public office are those (usually white males) who have, or have access to, the hundreds of thousands, or millions, of dollars that are needed in order to mount a "credible" campaign. With those in positions of leadership so unrepresentative of our society as a whole and so allied to the narrow interests of an even less representative monied elite, "government of, by, and for the people" is impossible.

IS THE BEST WE CAN do about this intolerable but long tolerated situation simply to keep waiting for the "right candidate" to come along, and in the meantime to keep choosing between the greater or lesser of two evils? Does the answer lie in trying to recruit good candidates who pledge to represent and be accountable to the public's interests? Should we throw our energies into trying to start a third party, given that the Republicans and Democrats both represent, and are financed by, the same big-money interests?

All of these approaches miss the point. Most people who would make honest and accountable public officials choose not to become candidates under current circumstances. The few good folks who do run for major public office rarely win. And the tiny handful who do win can't help adjusting to the corrupting realities of the money-based system.

Even a third party, were it to overcome the institutional barriers designed to block the very existence of third parties, would have to play by today's rules of the game. The point is that until we change those rules, new candidates and new parties, however idealistically they start out, will soon come to behave like the old ones.

What we are talking about is basic structural reform of our entire political process. No aspect of the current arrangement should go unquestioned or unexamined, from issues of information dissemination and media ownership, to issues of political centralization and decentralization, to the relationship between political democracy and economic oligarchy.

Within the electoral sphere, reform goals must include universal voter registration, free and equal media time for all qualified candidates, required candidate debates, fair ballot access for third parties and independent candidates, and most important of all, the elimination of privately financed elections and the creation of a system of democratically financed elections for all major public offices.

On the face of it, of course, the notion of privately financed public servants is an oxymoron. "In a society in which money is so unequally and unjustly distributed," wrote Philip Stern in his ground-breaking book, The Best Congress Money Can Buy, "money must not be the medium of political democracy."

But, unfortunately it is, and always has been. No matter that we would recoil at the idea of judges taking money from plaintiffs and defendants, or, for that matter, baseball umpires taking money from pitchers and batters. When it comes to giving money, and lots of it, to those who formulate our public policies, it's considered neither illegal nor reprehensible. We simply call it a campaign contribution.

Imagine what democratically financed elections would mean. Anyone who could demonstrate sufficient public support would receive an equal amount of public financing for his or her campaign. Thus, every candidate, regardless of her or his economic circumstances or ability to raise large amounts of money, would have an equal shot at getting elected. No candidate or elected official would have to spend time soliciting funds from wealthy donors (most congressional candidates now spend 70 to 80 percent of their time fund raising during election years, and half their time during non-election years). Instead they could take the time to debate the issues and listen to their constituents.

Most important, once in office their legislative and policy-making decisions would no longer be biased by their dependence on those wealthy private interests who finance their re-election.

And last but not least, the cost of such a system, based on total public financing, would be but a fraction of what privately financed elections are now costing us in terms of tax loopholes, regulatory exemptions, corporate subsidies and bailouts, and other "favors" routinely performed by government officials for their financial backers.

For a U.S. pro-democracy movement to have the strength and the staying power to bring about democratically financed elections as well as a host of other fundamental changes, it must be rooted in a combination of unequivocal moral outrage and a compelling moral vision. Religious communities and people of faith have a potentially critical role to play in the formation and sustenance of such a movement--just as they have played a key role in virtually every one of America's earlier social movements.

The promise of full and equal political participation has everything to do with our belief in the God-given dignity and worth of every human being. Surely this is a moral and spiritual matter as much as a political matter.

We ourselves need to believe that "politics as the practice of morality is possible."

Randy Kehler was a conscientious objector to war-tax payment and a member of the Working Group on Electoral Democracy in Deerfield, Massachusetts when this article appeared.